<p>A person who traveled overseas recently asked several people about American schools. According to the person, the schools mentioned most frequently were Harvard and Princeton. Other schools mentioned were Columbia, NYU, and a "few flagship American state-owned universities." I assume the person meant schools like the University of Michigan. Bear in mind this is just a sample and may not represent how people around the world in general view American schools.</p>
<p>Anybody else here who traveled had a similar experience regarding the popularity of American schools abroad?</p>
<p>Well for the Shanghai area of China there's a handful of schools that are almost universally recognized by any working professional. These are in no particular order after the first:</p>
<p>Harvard</p>
<p>Yale (not THAT well known for whatever reason)
Columbia
MIT
Berekely
Stanford</p>
<p>Princeton from my experience for whatever reason is not that well known either. I suspect it's because they neither get a lot of Nobels or have any grad programs. </p>
<p>Harvard/MIT/Columbia seem to be big ones universally. Harvard & Columbia actually hire PR firms worldwide to boost their name-recognition...</p>
<p>That is surprising that you say Yale is not well known in China. Their president even came over here, and they have a huge amount of Chinese students at Yale.</p>
<p>The person said Yale was not mentioned much either when discussing American schools. The schools most mentioned were Harvard, Princeton, and the other schools in my original post.</p>
<p>In fact, Yale recently announced that it is to hire a PR firm to boost its popularity internationally.</p>